IPA Special Study Highlights (June 2025)
Independent Project Analysis (IPA) is most well known throughout the capital projects world for our Project Evaluation System (PES®), a suite of products that we use to help our clients de-risk their projects at different phases in the project life cycle. Many are also familiar with the exclusive metrics and research we provide to members of our Industry Benchmarking Consortium (IBC) and its upstream counterpart, the UIBC. However, many people are surprised to learn that IPA’s Project Research Division (PRD) also conducts dozens of short-term special studies for our clients every year.
Each bespoke research study starts with a key question from an owner company about how to overcome the complex challenges they are facing—whether for a project, their portfolio, or their project system at large. When the question cannot be answered through one of our standard products, a new special study is launched. Over the course of a few weeks, our talented research analysts uncover deep insights to answer the question and provide actionable recommendations to help the client make informed decisions. This is made possible by leveraging IPA’s vast database containing more than 24,000 projects and 21 million data points, coupled with our proven methodology of measuring project drivers and their effect on project outcomes.
Continue reading below for brief summaries of a few of the special studies we’ve conducted for our clients over the last few months. If you have a burning question you would like IPA to explore, complete the form below to start a discussion.
Recent IPA Special Studies
Is Accelerating Project Schedule Worth the Cost?
A large national oil company wanted to understand the risk of cost growth and schedule slip from accelerating a project timeline and circumventing parts of their work process. To meet aggressive target dates to achieve mechanical completion and startup, the team was planning to bypass several assurance steps and reviews. The client’s project team recognized that bypassing their process may save time during project definition but would likely result in longer execution times and higher costs because of incomplete front-end work. The question was, how much extra cost and schedule? We answered this question by examining similar completed projects across the industry in our database and quantifying the influence of skipping specific work process steps on cost and schedule outcomes. These data helped the owner understand the impact of their decision on project performance.
What Are Best Practices for Guiding a Site and Sustaining Capital Project Organization?
A competency center within an international mining, minerals, and metals company needed to boost its ability to support its decentralized site and sustaining capital (SSC) spend. Specifically, the group wanted to be able to confidently guide its many sites on capabilities, staffing, and organizational structure. IPA leveraged our extensive database and decades of experience working directly with SSC project organizations to provide the client with detailed insights on a range of topics. Now, the client has a package of Best Practices that they are using to advise their SSC organization on topics including:
- Project Manager (PM) workload
- Best Practices for implementing different site staffing strategies
- Structure models for SSC organizations
- Site staffing analysis
- Project team reference for large SSC projects
- The quantitative value of site-based full-time equivalents (FTEs)
- The quantitative value of centralization
- The effects of functional turnover at the project and portfolio levels
How Do Project Size and Contracting Strategy Affect Team Staffing?
A multinational fuels industry company sought to understand the differences in required project team staffing levels across two dimensions: project size and contracting strategy. IPA reviewed the client’s staffing plans for six different project classes—three distinct project sizes (US$100 million, US$500 million, and US$1 billion) with two different contracting strategies for each. IPA has long used machine learning to understand industry staffing norms for capital projects. By comparing the client’s staffing plans to similar completed projects in our database—based on project characteristics, scope, and execution factors—IPA was able to identify where the client was aligned and misaligned with industry norms regarding key functions across the life cycle for each project class.
What Is the Market Outlook for the Next Few Years?
Given the continued global market uncertainty, a multinational oil and gas company sought to improve its understanding of industrial capital project markets and ability to forecast market capacity constraints for industrial onshore and offshore sectors. The company was specifically interested in gaining insights to inform portfolio decision making at or before Gate 2 (end of FEL 2). IPA has performed similar assessments for various companies over the years and has developed a Market Stress Index (MSI) to measure the state of the market for this purpose. IPA provided the client with 20+ years of historical trend data on each element of the MSI—including project price escalation at composite and component levels, lead times for major equipment, market conditions sentiment as reported by project teams, capital investment indicators, macroeconomic leading indicators, and much more. IPA also provided MSI trend data over the last several years and included our forecast for where it is heading through 2028. Now the company has an expected outlook for capital project market conditions over the next several years to aid in portfolio decision making.
What Are the Risks for Using New Technology in a Megaproject?
A large multinational oil and gas company asked IPA to perform a risk assessment of a megaproject using technology that is completely new to the company. The client wanted IPA to produce an independent view of the likely cost, early operational performance, and duration of similar new technology commercialization projects. IPA analysts first drew a subset of nearly 2,000 completed projects from its vast database that were similar to the project in question in terms of complexity and technological step-out. IPA then produced a set of metrics for ramp-up, startup, and early operational performance to highlight industry performance as well as potential risks. IPA also provided risk mitigation strategies to increase the client’s likelihood of meeting its early operational performance and startup duration goals. The company has already asked IPA to perform a similar New Technology Risk Assessment for another project that is in the early planning stages.